Plague Time: From One Day to the Next.

Over the past week I have cut my internet usage back dramatically. I have got in to the habit of locking my Chromebook with an app so I can not use the internet until 10pm in the evening. When I do, it is usually to check a few sites and then lock it for the next day before I go to bed. This has given me some much needed time away from the internet to clear my head and I feel a great deal calmer for doing so. Today, I decided to go on my laptop early in the morning and took the opportunity to write this blog post just for the sake of writing something.

I live with my parents, so when I have wanted to use the internet I have been using my mum's phone instead. my dad's phone has a glitch which means the date resets to sometime in the year 2000 and then limits what websites you can go on. Altogether, that probably amounts to maybe a half-an-hour burst twice a day, which is still much less than the four-plus hours it normally amounts to. I have at least three more hours a day than I would usually have.

For now, I have been binge watching episodes of "Heroes" on BBC Iplayer. I enjoy it but the show feels very "cluttered", with too many characters or distinct plots interacting for me to really settle in to it. I would have preferred if they took things more slowly and focused on a handful of characters. You could, for instance, have told the story from Sylar's perspective and made it a whole lot darker. It is nonetheless very addictive as the episodes always seem to end with a cliff hanger that makes you want to hit the button so you find out what happens next. So I will no doubt be continuing with that for a while.

I am trying to live as normal life as possible these days. I have depression and have suffered from it for roughly 12 years now. It was my 31st birthday in July and, frankly, I just feel very lucky to have reached that age under the circumstances. I regret being a little overweight, unemployed and unable to support myself financially, but that has been dwarfed by the events of the year so far. It does not feel so pressing or have the sting it usually would have because, for once, events are clearly out of my control and I can't blame myself for not participating in a world gone mad. It is a profoundly strange experience to have spent so long with mental health problems only to realise you were the sane one and it was everyone else who had lost touch with reality.

Much of my day is therefore organised around prioritising my mental health to manage the symptoms and ensure I have a good day, or at least an easy one. My parents support me financially, with free food and accommodation. As I am not going to out on day trips on the bus to eat out or go to the shops, my expenses have been essentially zero (minus paying for broadband and a charity I signed up to support, which comes to £19 a month). I still have the same ten pound note in my wallet that I had three months ago and it's likely to remain in their for several more months to come.

We have a large garden and a summerhouse down the bottom. It's looking very beautiful these days. We have corn field next to us, with the crop growing a mixture of yellow, green and even red as it blows around in the wind. After getting the seeds from the bird seed, my dad has planted some sunflowers in the garden which have now fully grown. They have wilted a little in the heat and lost a few petals, but are otherwise a very impressive sight. The summerhouse has proven to be a godsend as it means one of our number (myself, my mum and my dad) can get out of the house at least temporarily and spend a few hours down there. My mum uses it to paint, my dad to read art books stored on the shelves and for me, it's either writing in notebooks or talking to myself as a kind of therapy to get anything off my chest.

Whilst depression is always a drag, I remain very fortunate to be in this position and I am trying to make the best of it. I do wish I could walk up the street in to the village so I could sit in the local restaurant and eat a nice steak pie with the crumbling dry crust, gravy and vegetables. Or maybe that sticky toffee pudding with the treacle like sauce. It's the little things I miss. But I can live without that for now as I appreciate how much is going on and how we all have to make some sacrifices to keep ourselves and each other safe during "plague-time". Of the few friends I do have, I have kept in touch by sending them texts or talking to them online by chatting on discord.

As for Jess, our little black cat, she is enjoying the attention she is getting and the trips up and down to the summerhouse where she snuggles comfortably on the wicker chair or stretches out on the floor in the summer heat. If only we could all be as undisturbed as a sleeping cat, perhaps the world would make more sense.